


Life is Wonderful

by openhearts



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Night at the Bones Museum, pilot, season five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-30
Updated: 2009-12-30
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Originally posted at LiveJournal)</p><p>And then they pause and catch each other's eyes again, prompted by absolutely nothing except five years of not letting these moments complete themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life is Wonderful

**Author's Note:**

> Written in [](http://zerodetorres.livejournal.com/profile)[**zerodetorres**](http://zerodetorres.livejournal.com/) ’s Secret Santa Fic Exchange for the lovely and talented [](http://cardiogod.livejournal.com/profile)[**cardiogod**](http://cardiogod.livejournal.com/) , who wanted Booth/Brennan or just Brennan, no weird parings, characters, or genres, and prompted me with post-Pain in the Heart or Night at the Bones Museum - what if Angela and her gang hadn't walked in at the end?  Beta’d by [](http://obrien-blue.livejournal.com/profile)[**obrien_blue**](http://obrien-blue.livejournal.com/)  and [](http://tempertemper.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://tempertemper.livejournal.com/)**tempertemper**.  Lucy and Kate, thanks so much for hosting, and Rachel, I hope you enjoy it!  You got me to finally write something for season five, which was a feat in and of itself :)  
> 

Nothing happens.  Nothing happens for a long time.   
   
She clenches her jaw.  He thinks, not for the first time, that she doesn't look especially attractive when she does that.  Still, he thinks about kissing her.  She's an inch, a breath, a hair away.  Her mouth looks . . . "Be a cop," she taunts.  
   
Booth doesn't think of himself as the kind of man who would try to threaten a woman - who wasn't a suspect anyway.  This woman?  She seems amused at his frustration.  He can't stand it.  
   
He wants her to shut the hell up.  
   
He wants to prove her wrong.  
   
He wants her speechless and breathless.   
   
He wants to kiss her.  
   
_  
   
   
He slides closer and has a brief thought that this is the end of something, that there's no going back.  Sounds of the party fall down the staircase at the far side of the exhibition room; laughter, shuffling feet, music.  He's leaned in, and she's held still for him and smiled, and hell if it isn't the closest they've gotten since Caroline Julian and her mistletoe.   
   
And then they pause and catch each other's eyes again, prompted by absolutely nothing except five years of not letting these moments complete themselves.  There's a moment where abject terror fills them both and they repel slightly, like magnets flipped to the wrong side.   
   
She reaches out and twists nervously at his bow tie, feeling a strange pull to touch him.  She likes him in a bow tie.  It's different and novel, but there's also something essentially Boothy about it.  She likes it.  
   
His fingertips brush over her shoulder, pretending to fix her hair.   
   
"I'm . . . important to you," she says slowly.  Like turning a bone in her hands.  Slowly and carefully.  
   
"Yeah, of course," he answers quickly.  His hand drops away and he puts it in his pocket.  He grins at her.  
   
"I didn't know why."  She looks down at her hands folded in front of her.  She twists her fingers together tightly.  
   
"Whaddaya mean you didn't know why?  We're partners."  He raises his other hand to her arm and grasps it reassuringly.  His smile is easy and light, and his palm is warm.  "Come on Bones, you know this.  We're . . . we're partners."  
   
"No, Booth.  You . . ." she watches him as she trails off.  She feels suddenly that she may be about to tell him something he doesn't know.  That's she's not entirely certain she knows.  She has evidence but it's . . . not the kind she's used to.  Like his math, like his transcendent and eternal, physics-defying . . . she intellectually understands most of it but knows it will never really feel like it's hers.  
   
"I what Bones?"  
   
"You believe you're in love with me.  Romantically."  
   
He looks up - she's not sure where he was looking before, but their eyes focus together suddenly.  
   
It's the longest moment.  
   
It's five years.  All over again.  
   
"More than just romantically, Bones.  More than that."  He takes a step forward and his other hand closes lightly around her elbow.  She's not sure what he means; if he means "more than that" as assent.  She thinks that's what he means.  
   
"I've known that I love you for a long time but I didn't know why."  
   
"That's not entirely flattering,” he says.  There’s a smile, a reflex on his mouth.  It would be time to give her the out, to keep it from getting too heavy.  It’s not time for that anymore.  
   
Her brows furrow as she continues, trying to ignore his interjection.  "When I look at the evidence as a whole-"  
   
"Evidence?"  It’s another reflex.  The nerves are growing for them both.  His neck itches and her cheeks go pink.  He takes the smallest step back.  His hands slip down her arms, but she catches his forearms and holds, keeps him from backing away too far.  She lets go quickly, but he stays rooted to the ground in front of her.  
   
"When I look at the evidence as a whole, I know it's true.  I know why."  
   
"Why?”  His voice is incredibly low and quiet.  He isn't often loud, but his voice now is so much . . . softer.  
   
"I chose you to donate sperm so I could have a child and I did that because . . . because I wanted to- I wanted you to . . . I wanted you.  And me."    
   
She looks down at her hands resting flat against his chest.  She didn't realize she'd put them there, but it seems right.  Booth would be thinking about hearts right now - some mix of anatomical and theoretical.  She needs him to understand, in his terms and hers.  
   
Her mouth opens again and her eyes look, search, deep, but-  
   
He picks up the thought and helps her carry it.  “You wanted you and me to be . . . together?”   
   
He rests his hands on top of hers and peels them away gently to wrap in his again.  They stare down at their fingers twisted together for a moment.  He almost thinks it's a joke, or that she's going to keep talking and it will turn out that he misinterpreted everything she'd said, but she nods.  
   
"Relationships don't last, Booth," she continues.  "We know that.  But a person is permanent.  Even if that person changes, or leaves, or dies, their existence was real.  There's tangible proof of where they came from and how they lived.  It's the only way-"  
   
She breaks off, and looks at him again.  She feels lost on the way to an unfamiliar destination.  His head is still bowed deeply, and she feels his hands shifting around hers.  
   
It’s the most literal, most indelicate way of saying it, of thinking it.  If you mix this DNA and that DNA . . . Someone watching could almost laugh.  It’s . . . just.  That.  Simple.  And she never told him, until now.  Right now, this moment, this night, this time.  
   
“Why now?" he asks, still looking down.  "I mean, you said you’ve . . . known . . . for a long time, so . . .”  
   
“You said that some things are ours.  It’s important to me that those things remain ours.  And I realized that they might not if I didn’t tell you this.  I realized . . . what could be at stake and I realized I didn't want to risk it.”  
   
He nods silently and looks back at her.  There's a pause, and his expression looks . . . cautious.  Guarded.  The change makes her want to pull her hands back and leave.  More than leave - flee, run, escape.  This moment, the pause where she feels overwhelmed by irrational fear and anxiety, waiting for some outcome she has no control over, is what she's been avoiding for most of her life.  
   
It stretches as he stares down at her hands in his and thinks.  About DNA, about a number of kills versus a number of saves (does every time he's saved her life count separately, or as one?  Does the fact that she might have just saved his life count for or against his debt?), about Parker, about her mother and her father, about bones in boxes stretching into infinity.  
   
When he finally speaks, he wishes it was sooner.  Her expression is nearing panic, barely concealed.  He runs his thumb down her cheek, and begins:  "Temperance, I love you.  I'm in love with you, and I-"  
   
But the rest of the words pouring out of his heart are silenced when she kisses him, holding his face in her hands, overturning his thousands of doubts piled up over the years.  
   
It's rushed and desperate and five years.  He wanted to be the one to kiss her, when he'd said everything he wanted to say - although what more could there be? - when they weren't at a party, when she wouldn't have to step out of his arms' reach to give a speech in a few too-short minutes.  This isn't the worst time but it's not the best.  But it is - it's happening, happened, and what else matters?  
   
She pulls away and wraps her arms around him, hugging him tightly, fiercely.  "I love you," she says once, quietly.  The words have more gravity than even he has ever realized, and his arms around her don't feel adequate somehow.  
   
He's speechless and breathless.  
   
He loosens her grip around him and just looks at her, takes her in.  They smile.  
   
Finally.  
   
_  
   
   
Five years from now, five years ago.  A shooting range, or a museum, a cop and a squint, a man and a woman, him and her.  It all comes together.  Eventually.  It's complicated.  It's just that simple.  
   
It's-  
   
"Hey you guys, come on!" Angela calls from the staircase.  
   
_  



End file.
